Pardon Me
by The Last Letter
Summary: This was never the life Adam imagined himself, but this is the life that Mia's ghost had left him to rot on.


_Pardon me while I burst _

_Pardon me while I burst _

Another useless fucking hotel room in another useless fucking town.

I am completely alone, but what else is new? I haven't been anything but alone since the last time I saw … her. Unbidden, her eyes began to float in front of mine. I saw those dark depths; the abyss I had fallen into that I had never been able to free myself from. She still had a hold on me, after all this time apart, and I was so _angry_ about it.

She had made it perfectly clear that we were never going to see each other again. She had spent me spiraling downward, unable to move, unable to eat, unable to even get out of bed and her memory still has the fucking audacity to haunt me.

Growling low in my throat, I picked up the tequila bottle that I'd nearly emptied in the four hours I've had it and I hurl it at the wall, right between where her eyes are floating.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" I scream at those eyes, which stay there, amid the dripping liquid and shattered glass.

I don't want to remember her but I also don't ever want to let go. Remembering her is painful, thinking of her out there in her life without me is even worse, but if I let her go, it's like we never happened and I never mattered.

But the truth is there, no matter whether or not I acknowledge it. Whether or not I mattered then has no bearing on the reality that I don't matter now.

I pound my fists into the plush carpet, feeling the shards of the bottle dig into my fingers and _god_, the pain feels good – not because I'm any kind of a pain junkie, but because it's different from the pain I've been living with, the pain I can never escape.

The pain of Mia Hall.

_A decade ago, I never thought I would be. _

_A twenty three on the verge of spontaneous combustion. Woe-is-me_

I hate meet and greets. Sometimes, it's for the usual reasons – the fans are mauling, I have to pretend the band and I are still all lovey dovey – and sometimes it's for another reason. I like the fans. I like the guys who will rock talk and I like the girls with their adoring smiles but a lot of the time, a boy will pop up (we _do_ have a lot of young teenaged fans). And I'll look at him, and I'll see myself from ten years ago.

That boy will look at me like I descended from the heavens – the same way I would look at any of my music idols if I ever encountered them – and I will automatically feel shame. I can see the dreams on the young boy's face, dreams of being like me, when I would give anything to be like him again.

When I was sitting in my room with a guitar, or tripping around coffee shops on my own, I had dreams that outshone the stars. I ached to see my name in lights and to play my guitar in front of thousands. I wanted to write songs and reach people; I wanted to inspire.

Now that I'm actually on the stage, now that I have the fans, now that my name glares at me no matter where I turn, all I want to do is stop the ride and get off. It was so overwhelming that I had stopped functioning. Everything I had ever had, everything that I had ever wanted, had disintegrated in front of my eyes, leaving me a useless shell.

I'm not good for anything except smoking cigarettes and popping pills.

_But I guess that it comes with the territory. _

_An ominous landscape of never-ending calamity. _

When I was young, and had just started playing, my dreams of stardom beginning to emerge in my mind, I thought of all the famous musicians who'd imploded. Back in that age of innocence, I swore that I wouldn't crack under the pressure. I wouldn't become another suicidal legend.

I wasn't suicidal but if I got hit by a truck tomorrow, I wouldn't care. In fact, if you told me today the exact time and place the truck would hit me tomorrow, I'd probably still show up.

What I'm doing is existing. I pump myself full of cigarettes. I swallow whatever pills the doctors prescribe. I plaster on a smile and pretend that it doesn't hurt that my best friends in the entire world can't stand me anymore, that the woman I love doesn't love me anymore.

I'm a walking stereotype. I am the brooding rocker, falling to pieces on the inside, pain reflected in his lyrics and in his eyes. I'm their 'Wilde Man'. I trash hotel rooms and I fuck groupies. I fight with my band and reporters lust after the story I hold, but many hesitate to face me in person.

I have become what I once swore I never would.

I guess that's the thing about dreams. They crumble, they fall apart, and they lie to you. I've gotten everything I ever thought I'd wanted but everything I needed was gone. My friends, my love, even my own damn mental stability.

I've never been the type of person who looks in the mirror and doesn't like what they see. Even in my worst moments, I'd been able to appreciate that I was who I was, and I had built myself. Now, when I look in the mirror, it takes all I have to not to drive my fist through the glass and shatter the image of myself.

I was supposed to be better than this. I'd had higher expectations of myself.

But I am their Wilde Man now.

I still don't know what to think of this.

_I need you to hear. I need you to see. _

_That I have had all I can take_

The band has a theory. Technically speaking, I'm not supposed to know about this theory, but they were talking about me and I eavesdropped. They think the only reason I write songs, the only reason I play music at all anymore, is that I think _she'll _hear me. They say that I don't weave into the music like I used to; I don't play like I love it, I play it like it has a purpose.

I spent a long time thinking about the things I'd overheard. Within the band, it was no secret that every song I've written has been a result of _her_. I wrote to fill the void in me that she'd left behind – a void filled with anger, hatred, and confusion. I let the music – loud and volatile – batter through me, telling the story of the love that burned me passionately, and then burned me to a crisp.

The band, I finally had to concede, could have very well been right. For a long time now, I'd been trying to deny that I had fallen out of love with the music, but it was getting harder to do. Picking up a guitar felt like a death sentence; singing at all physically pained me.

I know that I could blurt out some bullshit about how I can't let the band down, how I owe them something (and I _do_ owe them something – I owe them _everything_) and let that be the story of why I still play. Deep down, though, I had already realized that those words, traded around in a conversation I wasn't included in, were true. The band knew me better than I knew myself, despite all of the hardness between us.

I _want_ her to know that I am doing fantastic. I want her to see my name and feel the same rip in her heart that I do every time someone dared stray close to the topic of her. I want my face to show up in the tabloids and for her to glance at them, tears coming to her eyes as she realized I was with somebody. I want her to hear my music, no, not hear my music, but _feel_ my music and realize that underneath the lyrics chanted by diehard fans, lay the ruin of us.

Most of all, though, I want her to still be Mia and realize that beneath the persona, I am crying out for her to help me.

_And exploding seems like a definite possibility _

_To me _

"YOU CAN'T KEEP PULLING SHIT LIKE THIS!"

"THE FUCK I CAN'T!" I roar back at Aldous. I begin to pace the length of my hotel room, feeling trapped as I realize he's standing in front of the door. I can't get out.

"No, you can't," he says sternly, as though he actually has a say on what I do. Aldous is a glorified babysitter; he is the clean-up crew for the shit storm that is Shooting Star. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, but Adam, you can't keep fucking up like this."

I make a face at him. "You mean fucking up in front of the paparazzi. I'm free to do whatever I want so long as it doesn't make it to the press."

"Exactly!" Aldous waves a finger at me, "but _everything_ gets to the press sooner or later. God sakes, they're going to eat you alive."

I want to tell Aldous he's wrong on two counts. Not everything has made it to the press (she hasn't) and I can't be eaten alive (I'd have to have some piece of me living for that).

"What do I care? I'm living my life. They can spin it and report it however they like. I don't give a shit."

"Maybe you should start giving a shit, Adam. What are you going to do when you find yourself with nothing because you didn't care enough?"

"I ALREADY HAVE NOTHING!" I scream at him, and I feel no shame when Aldous sees me cry.

_So pardon me while I burst into flames. _

_I've had enough of the world, and its people's mindless games _

_So pardon me while I burn, and rise above the flame _

_Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same._

The part of the life I never anticipated was how much of a show I would have to put on. I'm still young, I'm still going to make mistakes, but I'm not allowed to. I have to be a perfect person. I'm not allowed to be a screw-up in this senseless, media driven world.

There are people who talk about me. I get the good reviews, I get the bad reviews. I understand that not everyone in this world is going to love me, but how can they tear me down and judge me when they don't even know me? People will comment on the lies or overblown truths that are slapped across internet sites and gossip magazines.

To them, I'm not a real person. I'm a celebrity. That means that they can toy with me, and say whatever they want, because it's not going to hurt.

People, when they say those things, don't realize that I can see their words and it pierces me every time. They have shaped the person I am, have fed that bitterness inside me that says _you're not good enough, if you were, she wouldn't have left you standing there._

Every time I see those hateful words, based on nothing, I have to struggle to keep my perfect image – the image the media expects to see, but does everything they can to undermine.

It makes me so hateful on the inside to see how they – the media, the disgruntled fans, and (though I loathe this word) the haters – can so mercilessly rip apart someone's reputation and not even blink.

Before I entered this world, I had on rose coloured glasses, and I'm not ashamed to admit that now. I thought the media hype couldn't be that bad; I thought the anti-fans couldn't be that bad; I thought the good of being famous, of being _heard_, could outweigh everything.

But, like so much else, I was wrong about that too.

_Not, two days ago I was having a look in a book _

_And I saw a picture of a guy fried up above his knees _

_I said I can relate _

In the real world, I'd probably be labeled an addict and thrown into rehab before I had a chance to defend myself.

In this world, I'm dropped in front of doctors who prescribe even more drugs, because I am a machine, I am not allowed to fail. If pill bottle after pill bottle helps me function, then I should never be allowed to run out.

One night, when Liz and Mike were out, Fitzy invited me into his hotel room. It was one of the rare nights when we could get along, when there wasn't hurt and a wall of separation between us. These nights became fewer and far between and eventually blinked out of existence, but that night, it was me and Fitzy in the hotel room, with popcorn and take-out.

He was having this obsession with a show called _Intervention_. It definitely wasn't my first choice, but I wasn't about to stay camped out in my bubble of loneliness if I had a chance to escape, even for only a few hours.

We didn't say much. There wasn't a lot for us to say. We both lived the same lives – the travelling, the fans, the tabloids – with the exception that Fitzy was handling it while I was throwing myself off the deep end (I never claimed to not be the weak link).

Besides, I was caught up in the show. I tried not to see how I could so easily break down the same way that the people on the television did. I tried not to see how their hands shook as I hid how my own trembled. I didn't want to see how they were losing themselves because I didn't want to admit that I was on that path myself – wandering, confused, trying to find meaning in a world that had none.

I tried not to see the similarities because I wanted to believe I was better than that – I wasn't one of them.

_Cause lately I've been thinking of combustication as a welcomed vacation from. _

_The burdens of the planet earth, like gravity, hypocrisy, and the perils of being in 3-D... _

I flop backstage, dropping to my hands and knees. I feel the sweat drip from my pores as I focus on the cold floor. I force myself to suppress my gag reflex, feeling nausea beginning to overcome me. My breath comes in short gasps, but I can't quite fill my longs properly. I give into my quaking limbs and smash into the floor. I don't feel the pain from my collapse, I just feel heavenly about the fact that I don't have to support myself anymore.

As I lay there, trying to recover myself, I could swear that I could literally feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I could feel all that had built up within me – the alienation, the animosity – and I could feel my bones bending from under the pressure. I imagine I can feel them beginning to explode, how they'll become shards and blow through my skin, turning me into nothing – the nothing I feel within myself every day.

It seems like a good thing – to be gone; to not have to deal with life; to not have to live with the void inside of me every day, the very void that can never be filled, no matter how I much I wrote, how much I sang, how much I put my pain on display.

"Adam, are you all right?" I hear Liz's voice, feel her hand touching my shoulder. I can hear her concern as she speaks, and I don't want her to care about me anymore. I've hurt them too much, I put them through hell (myself, as well), and she shouldn't care about me, but she does.

"Yes," I rasp. I force myself to stand up, despite the fact that I'm still quivering like a leaf on a windy day.

I am Adam Wilde.

I am larger than life.

I am never anything but fine.

_And thinking so much differently. _

_Pardon me while I burst into flames. _

_I've had enough of the world, and it's people's mindless games _

_Pardon me while I burn, and rise above the flame _

_Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same. _

_Never be the same...yeah. _

I can say a lot of shit. I can claim that fame changed me when the band gets in my face about how different I am now. I can also chalk it up to getting older, learning from my past mistakes, but everyone I say that to knows that it's a lie.

It's not the fame and it's not the natural evolution of Adam Wilde.

It was _her_ that changed me. She has always been the reasons that I change. When I first met her, I'd been a clueless kid. Then, I took one look at her, wrapped around her cello, and I had been a goner – just one look into her dark eyes, and I knew I had to better myself. I had to be the potential my mother and teachers always talked about, because she deserved nothing less.

And when she was gone, taking her love and my heart with her, I had nothing left. I was left with the devastation of us – something that was known to this day as the void.

She was the only one who had the power to change my completely. She was the only one who could reach me on a deeper level, who could see into my soul. No one could ever be like that again – get to me with a single glance, bring me to my knees with a single touch.

I could go on for days about the way I loved her, and the way I felt when she was gone but no words, in any language, could properly describe it. The only way to truly express her, was through the music that brought us together, and through the music that tore us apart.

I would wake up in the middle of night, swearing I could feel her touch like she was right next to me. I could feel her breath searing my skin, her kiss blistering my lips. She made me erupt into passion when I was with her, when we were in love with each other.

Now that she was gone, I had nothing to do but try and keep myself from erupting and I think, even that plan, will fall to pieces.

I need more than her ghost.

I need Mia.

_Pardon me while I burst into flames. _

_Pardon me, pardon me, pardon me. _

_So pardon me while I burst into flames. _

_I've had enough of the world, and it's people's mindless games _

_So pardon me while I burn, and rise above the flame _

_Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same. _

_Pardon me, never be the same. Yeah_

**I don't own anything recognizable. The song is **_**Pardon Me **_**by Incubus. Thanks to my beta: **_**ImagineYourself64.**_

**~TLL~**


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